Posted
by
Soulskillon Thursday October 14, 2010 @06:50AM
from the new-and-improved-ways-for-people-to-call-you-terrible dept.

RulerOf writes "Just over a year after hiring IceFrog, the lead developer of the wildly popular DotA Allstars mod for Warcraft III, and the speculation surrounding Valve's recent trademark filing for the 'DotA' name, Valve has officially announced Dota 2. Gameplay of Dota 2 is being ported 'exactly' from the current DotA Allstars and includes every hero, but vast improvements are being made to the game including VoIP, a coaching system, in-game rewards, and AI that takes over for disconnected players. Lastly, it all runs on top of the Source engine. (GameInformer's website appears to be struggling right now though, as they had an exclusive on this story.)"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_the_Ancients [wikipedia.org] is the 1st thing that comes up when you google DotA. See, that's what adults do, when they don't know what something is they look it up, not expect to be spoon fed.

Right, it has nothing to do with the fact that the "editors" on/. couldn't e bothered with linking or explaining what "DotA" refers too. See, that's what editors (are supposed to) do.

DotA is dying, and it's dying because there are already next generation replacements for it. A few years ago, the entire custom game list on Warcraft III would have been almost full of DotA and maybe a couple other games hosted here and there. These days it can take several minutes just to get a full game setup.

For those who actually enjoyed the way DotA played and the associated content there is already a complete replacement with Heroes of Newerth. Which pretty much is what Valve is talking about making here. And for those who were actually looking for something different than a straight DotA clone, League of Legends actually makes an effort to change the game up in meaningful ways. Most significantly by throwing out the Warcraft III stat system.

So despite Valve's track record, I'm not optimistic in their approach on this. I really doubt people want DotA yet again with a few enhancements. I think a 3rd generation sequel would have a lot more chance than a 1st generation remake. Unless they make more than trivial improvements in infrastructure this is not going to draw the players who are already in this market. Maybe they stand a chance for getting some new players, those not already involved in the MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games. It would have been nice to see Valve actually do some research before trying to jump blindly into this.

Skill based matching? Shades of SC2. Everything you do is tied back to your one true identity? Uh oh. I've been playing dota for something like six or seven years now. I *like* the fact that anyone can host a game (especially now that bots have made this process hassle-free) and I *like* the fact that anyone can roll up a new bnet account in a few seconds. I've never been banned for anything, so it's not ban avoidance or dodging a bad reputation that I'm after. I like not always being the same person in every game. I like getting in to games with people far more skilled than I am! Yes, I lose badly, but I always learn something about play techniques that goes on to improve my game. How much can you learn if you can always compete with those you play against? All that teaches you is that you don't have to change anything and you'll do fine.

I love getting in to games with the skilled players, the ones who can read your mind and are always up for a gank. Will I be relegated to the equivalent of pub mashups because of that one game where I fed like thanksgiving?

I've played LoL and HoN so I know what can happen when you try to clone DoTA. Little things being different can make a large difference in gameplay: towers in HoN don't act quite right, nor is the right click interaction the same. When cloning the cloners are never content to just copy a good thing, they always *ALWAYS* try to 'fix' things they think are broken... usually with unintentionally awful side effects. Part of what I, and other dota players, like about dota is going to be lost if it becomes a hosted by a single central authority, requires a monthly fee to play, subjects you to "reputation" requirements before you can enter good games, or any one of a dozen other things that seem like good ideas from the outside.

I like the idea of an updated dota client (war3 is a bit cumbersome!) but I worry about any big change. One nice thing about icefrog is that he doesn't change a lot of things at once, even when there's a big, sweeping change it's incremental. Since this is valve-based I'm presuming that means steam, and I hate steam in general. Will there be LAN play? Will we be able to host our own servers?

How will things like OMG mode be supported? This is by far the most popular sub-mode of DoTA at the moment and with the keys to the kingdom locked up in a non-user-editable valve proprietary game I don't think OMG would ever have been developed. I certainly hope valve plans to support this in dota2, along with the built in but less common modes (id, sc, hell even wtf).

tl;dr I'm worried by this, but I'd like to be happy about it. I just hope it's as good in every way as the existing dota.

True or not, I don't care. Icefrog could be an asshole for all I care as long as the result is that DoTA 2 copies DoTA and does not try to change things. DoTA works, changing it damages it (see LoL and to a lesser extent HoN). Sometimes we all dislike icefrog but if he's developing and defending DoTA then no other wrongs he does matter, IMO.

Managers and developers at game companies tend to live in a complete disconnect from their community, and sometimes they aren't even big gamers themselves. This leads to some really stupid decisions in gameplay and interface design that most gamers would scream at them for implementing.

Assuming the blog is truthful, I can only hope that he's being a controlling asshole to prevent these kinds of people from corrupting the gameplay people loved.

Let's ignore the fact that spelling out acronyms upon first use is one of the most basic elements of good article writing. If I Google for DotA, I don't know that the first hit resolves to the intended acronym unless I already know what DotA stands for in which case I wouldn't have needed to Google it in the first place.